


Something like a Situation

by halotolerant



Category: Atlantis (UK TV)
Genre: Atlantis Made Them Do It, Boys Kissing, Consensual, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Ritual Sex, Rituals, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Something Made Them Do It, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 13:39:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason takes a deep breath: “So what you’re saying is that because of a fertility ritual that’s a thinly veiled excuse for an orgy, which has in any case probably been rigged to keep me away from Ariadne – who, incidentally, I am not interested in – I end up having to marry Pythagoras?”</p><p>Hercules thinks a moment. “More or less."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something like a Situation

**Author's Note:**

> 'A random pebble-drawing ceremony made them do it' was an irresistable plot-line. Sorry notsorry *g*

“This is absolutely and completely ridiculous!” Jason says, not for the first time.

Pythagoras nods again – in the last half an hour or so, since they left the temple, Jason has been doing a lot of ranting and Pythagoras a lot of running after him and nodding wordlessly. They’re both, Jason realises, still clutching the shining silver pebbles they’d been handed – apparently at random – from the sea of ordinary white ones in the dish.

Jason is still feeling as full of the fires of indignation as he became when the Oracle had first told them their fate, but Pythagoras - he notices now - is looking a little less energetic. Unhappy, even. 

“It’s not like I don’t want to marry you!” Jason reassures him quickly. “Except, obviously not, because, you know, well... well, maybe here it’s not so, um...” 

This is not his finest oratorical hour. Or his best ever go at a chat up line. Not that he is trying to chat up Pythagoras, because that would be A Bad Idea. Pythagoras is the best friend he’s ever had, not to mention one of the few people in this insane parallel universe he can trust; he’d be crazy to risk that for anything. 

“What I mean,” Jason begins again, regrouping and surer of his ground this time. “What I mean to say is, that someone would obviously, _will_ obviously want to marry you. You aren’t the problem!”

Pythagoras doesn’t look as convinced as Jason would prefer. Jason could go on to list quite a few more specific reasons why Pythagoras is not an objectionable life partner, but that’s really not the road he ought to embark on.

“The problem,” Jason says instead, with emphasis, “is that King Minos apparently has some kind of fetish for randomisation of everyone else’s important life decisions! And so he thinks it’s OK to tell you and me to get married based on yet another round of lucky-dip!”

Pythagoras’ brow knots into a frown. “The pebble-drawing ceremonies of the temple are wreathed in years of...”

“Has anyone in this city ever attempted to make major decisions in a way that didn’t involve grabbing coloured pebbles out of a jar? Aren’t you supposed to invent democracy sooner or later?”

“Jason, you sound tired.” Pythagoras, given half a chance to play the mother hen, will always calm considerably. From injured nestling birds to stray cats, from old ladies who need their food given to them to, well, to random men who’ve washed up on the shore from nowhere and beyond, he’s already ready to help. Now, he steps closer to Jason and puts his arm round his shoulders. 

For a moment it’s really rather nice. Close and warm; Jason can smell the scent of Pythagoras’ skin at the nape of his neck, and it’s funny how quickly that scent has come to mean home. 

“I’ll make you some gruel and a maybe one of my herbal infusions? How about it?” Pythagoras offers, in his soothing, soft, _I know better than you, now let me handle this_ voice. Jason leans into it, into him, with a sigh. 

Abruptly, though, Pythagoras tense against him and pulls away, breaking the contact. 

“I mean, um!” Pythagoras begins. He’s flushing, his pale skin turning brick red in a way Jason would find amusing if it wasn’t so distressing right now. “I mean, if you want, because you’re my friend and so you have the right to choose what to do and I have no right to...”

Jason would gladly slap King Minos in the face, right about now. What does the man have against him?

“What King Minos has,” Hercules tells them later, in a world-weary voice, as they sit round the table at the house, Jason and Pythagoras having conveyed what happened when they went to ‘watch’ the ritual bond deciding pebble-drawing ceremony, and Hercules having said several phrases Jason doubted were anatomically possible, laughed, frowned and then decided to have a large swig of ale, “is a young daughter who is entirely too interested in you, Jason, for your own good. That’s what comes of aiming too high. Think of Icarus.”

“He flew too close to the sun and burnt his wings,” Jason finishes for him, resignedly, nodding. 

Hercules frowns. “No, no, I don’t think so. Icarus was an old mate of mine back in Thebes. Son of a fishmonger and tried to marry a mermaid. Did not end well, I tell you.”

Jason is about to follow the ‘mermaids’ comments, possibly to places he doesn’t want to know about (and having had a formative crush on Disney’s floppy-haired Prince Eric in his boyhood wouldn’t help), when Pythagoras, who has been frowning to himself for a while, speaks up. 

“You don’t mean,” Pythagoras says, addressing Hercules, “that you think the draw was sabotaged? No! It was the Oracle herself who made the selection!”

“And who pays for the Oracle’s dinners and keeps her in incense, I’d like to know?” Hercules raises a knowing eyebrow. “Now, don’t look at me that way Pythagoras, you know I believe in her power. But just because she can tell the future, doesn’t mean she won’t do a bit of sleight-of-hand as well. After all, it’s not as though she knows you and Jason from the next man along, she might as well pick you as anyone.”

Jason bites his lip. This would be another perfect time to tell the others about his... conversations with the Oracle. Except then he’d have to explain why he hadn’t already done so, even though he’d trust both of them with his life. And he doesn’t know how to explain some of it – any of it, really – without sounding quite insane. In fact, he’s getting the point where he can scarcely believe it himself, that he’d ever lived in a world containing things like electric irons and The London Underground and Gangnam Style. 

In that world he’d always been told he was a bit odd. A bit too bookish, a bit too obsessed with Classical Civilization, a bit too quiet, a bit too intense. Here, in Atlantis, and to these men, he’s something vaguely normal. He likes normal. 

He’s never really had anyone notice him, since his father died. Not until Pythagoras. And Hercules, and now Medusa, but that’s all secondary, it’s Pythagoras who let him in, the first time. 

“What I don’t get,” Jason says, “is why - whether she picked or a god did or whoever – why it’s two, well, two _men_. I thought you said this was a fertility ritual? And we’re not having each other’s babies, unless...” He freezes, and stared Pythagoras in the eye. “Tell me that in this world we still can’t have each other’s babies,” he demands, urgently. After man-bulls, attack tigers, satyrs and voodoo he’s ruling nothing out. After all, Athene was born from Zeus’ head...

“I am not gestating anything in my skull!” he states, for the record.

“Breathe!” Pythagoras instructs him, and leans in to rub his back until Jason’s calm again. Then, as if coming back to himself, Pythagoras repeats the interesting full-body blush from earlier in the day and takes his hand away again. 

“No babies. Not in heads, or, um, anywhere,” Pythagoras confirms. “But it’s not really, um...”

“When they say ‘fertility’ they mean ‘sex’, Jason,” Hercules says, in the patient tones of one who knows himself far more experienced than most men. “The fertile bit just sells it to the prudish folk by convincing them it’s somehow important to the crops and the fishing and therefore to them getting food in their stomachs. We’ve had all sorts, different years. Men, women, that time with the centaurs...” he drifts off into his own memories, with a vague sort of smile. 

Jason takes a deep breath: “So what you’re saying is that because of a fertility ritual that’s a thinly veiled excuse for an orgy, which has in any case probably been rigged to keep me away from Ariadne – who, incidentally, I am not interested in – I end up having to marry Pythagoras?”

Hercules thinks a moment. “More or less. It is only a ritual though, Jason, you don’t really get married.”

“Oh,” Jason says. He looks down at his hands and tries to breathe again. This is good. This is good thing, because he was angry about marrying Pythagoras, and so if he doesn’t have to he’ll be happy about that. 

Happy. Yes. Relieved. He’ll start feeling relieved any minute now. 

“Mostly,” Hercules continues, with a dismissive shrug, “the two of you just have shag in the middle of the temple whilst people watch.” He grins, looking from one stunned face to another. “I can’t wait to tell Medusa this.”

“Watch?” Jason cries out. He shoots a look across at Pythagoras, who looks actually unwell.

And, OK, it’s not like Jason doesn’t know how it feels; having the guy he’s got a stupid great crush on not liking him back. He’s been there and got the t-shirt and it was called Darren and went to his Sixth Form College and had a tattoo. Jason got over him, he can get over this. 

Of course, Darren never hugged him, or made him soup, or told him he was special. And Darren wasn’t kind like Pythagoras is, and his eyes weren’t so blue and wide, and he wasn’t anything like as clever, not that anyone could be...

Jason takes another deep breath. “That’s really not going to happen,” he says, as calmly as he can. 

“It’s the will of the gods, Jason,” Pythagoras says, with clear reluctance. He’s chewing on his lip and biting his nails and generally looking about as unhappy as Jason’s ever seen him. “If we don’t do it, we’ll anger them.”

“And therefore,” Hercules chimes in, “any funny business like sneaking away and there’ll be quite a lot of city militia devoted to making sure you, erm, play your part, so to speak.”

“It’s not funny,” Pythagoras snaps, getting up from the table, pushing his chair back so violently it falls with a clatter to the floor, and storming out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

Pythagoras is not a things-making-noise person. Jason winces. This is all his fault. If he’d never come to the city, then Pythagoras wouldn’t be stuck in this position, having to...  It had been bad enough when Jason had thought he’d have to go through some legally binding contract – that, at least, in private, they could have worked around. But this! In public, with people gathering to watch like some kind of sleazy circus, wide-eyed, pretending it was anything to do with their gods; it was disgusting. 

\- - -

“It is all as it is intended it should be,” the Oracle tells him, unblinking. 

Jason is not in the mood for Yoda-isms just now. He’s marched straight back to the temple from the house, and he’s not leaving until he’s sorted this out. There must be some way the ritual can be undone, or repeated to get a different outcome, or replaced with a pair of sheep or _something_...

“No, this is written, now. The hand of Apollo has moved me, and I have chosen you and your friend, and this is right,” she says calmly, even smiling just a little. “He is a god of learning and wisdom, and truly...”

“Wisdom is _not_ forcing people to things they don’t want in situations they don’t like!” Jason is astonished and angry to realise there are tears rising in his eyes. He just keeps seeing the look on Pythagoras’ face, and imagines having to kiss him, having to... having to... and Pythagoras, responding and going along with it simply because he’s afraid not to. Not afraid of Jason, maybe, but it would come to the same thing and he will not do that to someone, anyone, let alone a man he’s – admit it - more than a little in love with. 

The Oracle, unruffled, comes towards him with her hand stretched out in a mockery of caring. “You do not like the partner the god has chosen for you?” Her smile suggests that whatever the limits of her power may be, she nonetheless knows or has guessed exactly what Jason’s feelings are when it comes to his friend.  

“Is this part of the plan? Part of the joke?” Jason hisses at her. “He did pay you. Minos did, or the Queen! Was it Pasiphae? Did she tell you to make sure it hurt me? Well, guess what, you succeeded, whatever, listen...” he takes another deep breath. He’d made a decision as he’d run back to the temple, and for all it means – giving up his friends, his only security in this world, his only hopes of finding his father – he’ll do it, if it’s what it takes. “Listen, I’ll leave, OK? I will leave this city before dawn. And then the Queen doesn’t have to worry about Ariadne and you can tell everyone the god decided to pick someone else. Some couple that is actually a couple. Just promise me you’ll release him from it too.”

She stares back at him a moment. He becomes aware, slowly, of a swirling sort of darkness in the room, as if she’s sucking the light from around them, a noise like wind, a rising, howling roar.

“I am not,” she says, her voice soft and low and somehow more frightening than thunder, “Nor ever shall be, Pasiphae’s creature.” 

For a moment, she seems to loom so large he finds himself leaning backwards, afraid she or some part of her will crush him.

And then he blinks and the room is quiet again, spacious and smelling gently of beeswax and olive oil and rosewater, and she is standing quite a way away, not a hair out of place, and smiling at him. 

Jason understands, suddenly, why Pythagoras doesn’t want to make these powers angry. 

“Your devotion to him is most admirable,” the Oracle is saying now. “You want him, and here I have given him to you, and yet you turn away, wanting it to be by his choice alone. There are many who have failed such a test, but not you, son of your father.”

Jason stands up tall, and holds her gaze despite the instinctual prickle of fear up his spine that wants him to run, and fast, away from her and this place and the strangeness he knows he’s drawing ever closer to. 

She won’t tell him any more about that until she’s good and ready; he learnt that months ago.

“There is no trick, no plan, Jason,” she continues, coming closer to him in the normal way, padding over the floor in her simple sandals. “The god has chosen you for this honour, and your friend too. But not all know the intricacies of the ritual as I do. You must be bedded together in the temple sanctuary, yes, but this means what it sounds to mean – that you must stay in a bed, side by side, for a time. Only that. Not so painful, perhaps?”

Jason sighs. He can read a compromise when he gets one. And he really doesn’t want to leave Atlantis. He can share a bed with Pythagoras for a few hours easily enough, surely, they’ve practically done so anyway, on camping trips, and whilst they had that homeless bard staying with them, the one who liked to compose songs about the one-eyed Cyclopes’ one-eyed monster at three in the morning.

“OK,” he tells her, “But I’m bringing him back here too, so you can reassure him that we don’t have to, you know, actually do anything.”

She smiles, bright and pleased and disingenuous, and he turns away with a scowl.

\- - -

“This is nice!” Pythagoras says, surprise in his voice.

Jason has to agree. The temple, it turns out, has apparently invented the feather-bed several centuries ahead of everyone in the town, and lying on the wide mattress now he’s as comfortable as he’s been in months. 

It’s not as public as he’d feared, either. Even though they know they don’t have to do more than lie there, he’d worried that the crowds would come in and expect some kind of show. 

But they’re behind the main altar, and there’s another curtain around the bed, albeit a rather gauzy one, and most of the ritual is going on in the main body of the building out of sight, with just the odd reference to the fact that they’re there and ‘honouring the god in the way of all men’, which, Jason supposes, is not a lie because they’ll probably sleep eventually and Apollo is also a god of dreams. 

“So, before, the couples that Hercules talked about...”Jason can’t resist asking, after a while, as he lies ramrod straight on the bed in the semi-darkness, aware of Pythagoras next to him just as tense.

They’ve been there about an hour, he supposes. If they talk a little, it might help the endless time pass. 

“Some of them wanted to be out in view,” Pythagoras tells him. He sounds rather strange, like he’s losing his voice, husky. “Not all, though. Some others have been back here, in the years past. But I was afraid, because I didn’t know whether that was our choice or... I wouldn’t have dared to come and ask her. Not brave like you.”

There’s a wistfulness in his tone that Jason can’t let alone. 

“You’re one of the bravest people I know,” he says, firmly. “And the things you think of, the ideas you have...”

Pythagoras makes an unconvinced noise. “There's lots of things I haven’t tried,” he says, sadly. “I mean I’ve never actually, um... Well let’s just say if we had had to, um, do that, I wouldn’t have known how to...”

He sounds so mournful, and so ridiculously ashamed, like he thinks Jason will mock him. And that’s why Jason says it, at once, something he’s never told anyone.

“Well we’d have been in a fine state then, because I haven’t either.”

He feels more than sees Pythagoras twitch in surprise; it’s dim behind the curtain, with only the light from the braziers up on the walls high above and on the other side of the fabric. The ritual in the main body of the temple is sending soft, sweet smells through the air, and there’s a low chanting, a kind of sighing noise, voices of gentle, yearning pleasure wafting through; goodness knows what the crowd of celebrants is up to.

“Never?” Pythagoras sounds astonished.

“Never,” Jason confirms. “I wasn’t very popular, at school, and um, at Uni I mostly, I mean... And it’s not easy to meet men, nice men, when you’re working all the time and usually covered in dirt.”

There’s a long silence. Jason winces. He’s trying to think of some way to unsay the words, to work round them, all the time feeling a sinking horror in his gut – so maybe Pythagoras doesn’t just not like him, maybe he’s actually disgusted by this sort of thing - maybe that’s what was behind all his distress when the ritual first came up. 

“You like men?” Pythagoras says, almost a whisper. “But you never go to the baths or to the gymnasium or... I’ve never seen you interested in anyone.”

Jason licks his lips. The words are in his mouth and he says them, has to. When it comes to it, Pythagoras deserves more than a lie, however comforting. “Haven’t you? You were usually there. In fact, you were always there.”

“Hercules?” Pythagoras squeaks, and Jason reaches out instinctively, afraid the noise will bring someone or some kind of punishment. He puts his arm over Pythagoras’ chest; it’s warm, under the covers, and he’d forgotten that Pythagoras also slept with his shirt off. They’re skin to skin, and it does something funny to his brain. 

“No!” Jason hisses. “No! The other insane lunatic I live with.”

“Insane lunatic is a tautology,” Pythagoras begins to say and then stops, and Jason can feel his chest move as he takes a deep breath. “Oh! Oh...”

“Is that..?” Jason begins, but Pythagoras is twisting, turning to lie on his side, facing Jason and – he can just about see – frowning. 

“So why didn’t you want to do the ritual with me then?” Pythagoras shout-whispers. “You looked like someone had told you that you were being executed at dawn!”

“Well, so did you!” Jason whispers back. They’re close together, lying face to face, and as he moves forward, he feels his legs brush Pythagoras’. Skin against skin again, and the strange rush in his body as his blood relocates itself gives him the peculiar experience of being dizzy whilst lying down. 

They’re silent for a while. Pythagoras’ face is angled so what little light there is falls on it, and so Jason is able to watch his expression carefully whilst he reaches out, taking Pythagoras’ hand in his own.  

Jason’s never really done anything with anybody, and suddenly he’s glad of that, because nothing could feel as good as Pythagoras, right now, turning his hand over so they’re palm-to-palm. Even if it did, he wouldn’t want to be thinking of anyone else at this moment, of anything but the feel of Pythagoras’ answering touch as they shuffle a little closer together. 

Pythagoras seems almost scared. His eyes are bright and wide, and his mouth is open, his breathing heavy. Jason guesses he looks much the same himself. 

“I didn’t want you to have to...” Pythagoras says softly. He’s moving his thumb against Jason’s skin, slow strokes, dragging a little. 

“I didn’t want you to,” Jason answers. 

Pythagoras giggles, grins a little, and Jason loves him so very acutely it hurts. 

“Can I, um...” Jason’s seen enough films, he ought to be able to conjure a good line, and of course Pythagoras has not seen those films and wouldn’t know, but right now Jason’s brain is flat-lining everything but _Pythagoras Pythagoras Pythagoras_ like a drum beat, like his pulse rushing through him. “I want to kiss you,” he says, honestly. “I might not be very good at it, though.”

“I have a bit of experience there,” Pythagoras admits, and presses forward, and Jason isn’t sure whether he wants to kill the people involved or thank them, as he feels Pythagoras’ lips meet his own and all is warm and wet and this simmering, soaring, pulsing heat he’s never known before. 

At some point he’s moved to cradle Pythagoras’ head in his hands, and at some point they’ve pressed fully against each other, cleaving all along their bodies, the slick of skin and the beating of hearts and in the centre the thrumming, wanting, thrusting that Jason is doing without meaning to, against Pythagoras who is firm and – Jason struggles to breathe - _hard_.

Jason pulls back, gasping, and falls against the pillows. Keeps his hands on Pythagoras’ neck though, and draws Pythagoras bodily to lean over him, not wanting to break away for a second. 

Pythagoras’ smile is stupidly beautiful. 

It occurs to Jason that the Oracle has got precisely what she wanted. Or the god has. Or the Oracle knew what would happen. Or because she said it would, it has. Or...

He’s not really got enough spare higher function to figure all that out just now, though. 

“How long does this ritual last, anyway?” Jason asks, perhaps a little breathlessly, because Pythagoras is _there_ , right there, and they have touched, can touch, will touch – he’s feeling dizzy again. 

Pythagoras grins at him. “All night,” he says, and leans in again, apparently as eager as always to further his knowledge.

 


End file.
